26 may 2003
my little bro came back to domestic soil from kuwait yesterday. much relief. and thank yous to those that sent their kind words of support to me. also, i remembered what i forgot yesterday:
barber: you want usual? (points to photo of david beckham with moderate fauxhawk taped to mirror)
me: yeah, please.
barber: natural back or square back?
me: natural.
barber: you want straight razor or electrical razor?
me: electrical is fine.
barber: sideburns long, short?
me: long
barber: there?
me: perfect.
barber: you want it crazy on top? (musses hair)
me: yes, crazy. please.
25 may 2003
the run was good. treadmill is not even a remote comparison, since i can go on that four times longer than i can actually move my legs forward around a track. also outside you can pant loudly and spit and feel smug when you pass people, none of which are possible in the gym. must remember to call dad for his birthday today (remembering four years ago, jesus i was a sleaze).
got caught up remembering that and forgot what else i was gonna say, which was the whole point. fuck. i fuckin hate myself sometimes.
now i remember.
posted May 25, 2003 in delivery24 may 2003
remember the other day when i was talkin like a lovesick schoolboy about cold, moist weather? fuck that. now it's saturday and daddy's had enough. and now i'm gonna try to run on the east river park track in it. we'll see what happens.
posted May 24, 2003 in delivery23 may 2003
was it tuesday last week? went for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner and bumped into dan and robert and their friend rebecca that i met summer '01 at ps1 and then walked back over the queensboro bridge with her and dan. they were all impressed that i remembered that. three of the four in their group had gone to the same college as me, neat and coincidental. they'd just seen sandra bernhard perform at joe's pub. something good happens almost every time you walk out the door.
posted May 23, 2003 in delivery22 may 2003
wake up priapistically. get lots done at work and achieve goal of clearing outlook inbox to no vertical scrolling. a new record on the crunches today: 410. and you know what? not one fuckin ab is visible.
my reward is renting the rules of attraction. i read it (jesus) about eight years ago, but as a movie it's good and i'm such a bitch for anything coming-of-age anyway. which reminds me, raising victor vargas last weekend. great. love seeing my neighborhood on screen, it makes me proud, makes me wish a little bit that i'd grown up here so i could claim it as my neighborhood with no probs. but then i probably wouldn't be here now. i'm trying now to remember what the kid in the pool shower says to judy, something like i'm gonna fuck you so hard that your heart'll feel it.
at the gym i bump into trainer, who is blonder every time i see her. am listening to "for unto us a child is born" from handel's messiah as i stretch when realization hits that i am singing along. those sixteenth note passages are hard, and i got used to singing along when i tried to practice and learn them in school. now that will only get me an ass kicking at thug gym. huff and puff and stepmill my ass down while watching wwf on the dangling tv. wrestlers have gotten much hotter since i was a 4th grader watching hulk hogan and the fabulous moolah on saturday morning cartoons. one chick in the audience is holding up a sign saying "i majored in thugonomics!"
on the walk home it's cool and misty but clear, so the air is nice and clean and as good-smelling as it gets. now that it's warming up there's more people milling around avenue a, even with damp air. new york is at its best like this; when i fantasized about being a city slicker, it was coming home with sidewalks and fire escapes and cold, damp weather.
at the dvd store i returned last night's rental, twin peaks: fire walk with me, since i just won the first season dvd on ebay and watched the whole thing over the weekend. i remember having nightmares after i watched episodes when i was wee. fyi: this is one of its reviews on amazon: "i watched this and was very excited, i wish it could go on and on and on. unfortunately it doesn't go on, so i ate the dvds and casing and made a small poo castle. isn't that wonderful?" as if by lynch himself.
when you're touchin' me and my feelin's start to show, that's the time ...
posted May 22, 2003 in delivery21 may 2003
as my next trick, i will attempt to not come from now until sunday.
posted May 21, 2003 in sex20 may 2003
walk from work knowing that that's the last exercise i'm getting today. i thought by leaving at 5:30 that i'd have something left in me by the time i got home, but as soon as i finish eating i doze off, unreturning phone calls and emails and wake up at 9ish. i hate that.
posted May 20, 2003 in delivery15 may 2003
notes to self
feel good that you got moms very good stuff for mother's day. look forward to brother getting home from kuwait in a few weeks.
that medicine ball at the gym is satanic. but it fucking works.
stop stop stop complaining about your job, don't even feel badly about it on the inside. other people have real problems. the worst thing that can happen to you is getting fired, which would probably be a severance/unemployment blessing.
if you're so smart, why can't you get your brand new goddamn cd burner to work?
eat at some of the restaurants featured in the village voice's top 100 latin
for the past few years you have taken the high road re: amazon wishlists, and you know what? all you get is a pathetic feeling of moral superiority and no gifts. fuck that—dante woo turns 27 at the end of the month and will probably send you naked pictures of himself or a loved one if you show some love.
other reasons not to complain: you've recently met someone pretty rad, and you're getting to see lots of good art and music and reading in the world. wigfield, cremaster, x-men, maile meloy, emerging arts festival with live pussy and jami's reading (not necessarily in that order), a mighty wind, stiffed's ep finally came out.
posted May 11, 2003 in deliveryit's like you're nothing sometimes
when total descension is finally attained in cremaster 5 (1997), it is envisioned as a tragic love story set in the romantic dreamscape of late-nineteenth-century budapest. the film is cast in the shape of a lyric opera. biological metaphors shifted form to inhabit emotional states - longing and despair - that become musical leitmotivs in the orchestral score. the opera's primary characters—the queen of chain (played by ursula andress) and her diva, magician, and giant (all played by barney)—enact collectively the final release promised by the project as a whole.posted May 05, 2003 in artcremaster 5 opens with an overture that introduces the opera's characters and lays out the map of budapest that the narrative will traverse. the magician crosses the lánchíd bridge on horseback. the queen ascends the staircase of the hungarian state opera house with her two ushers. she settles onto her throne in the royal booth, and the ushers arrange a fleet of jacobin pigeons around her. pearls float on the surface of the pools in the gellért thermal baths, partially concealing the füdór sprites, who inhabit their underwater realms. the curtain rises to an empty theater, the conductor readies his orchestra, and the opera begins.
as the queen sings, her diva appears on the stage, delineating the proscenium arch of the stage by laying ribbons across its floor and then scaling its contours. the queen's mind wanders to memories of her beloved magician preparing for a leap into the waters of the danube from the lánchíd bridge. stripped naked, he positions plastic shackles over his wrists and ankles, then fits molded gloves on his hands and places weighted balls between his toes. his actions recall the famed bridge jumps of harry houdini, who was born in budapest in 1874. the magician is seeking transcendence, but the queen misunderstands his actions and thinks he is trying to take his own life.
the queen's ushers direct her attention to orifices in her throne through which she can see into the gellért baths below. her birds plummet through the passages in the throne, trailing long satin ribbons into the bath. her giant enters the watery path between the two pools, wading through the pearls to hip level. the sprites cluster around him with a garland of ribbons they have woven together out of those attached to the birds. they reach up through the water and affix the garland to the giant's scrotum. in the warm waters of the thermal baths, the cremaster muscle releases and the testicles descend. this climactic moment—the emergence of a fully differentiated state—is rendered visible when the pigeons soar upward with ribbons trailing.
the queen then relives the magician's leap into the river and swoons from the horror of her recollection. at this point the narrative mirrors the path of descension just revealed: having completed his climb, the diva tumbles to the stage, and the magician plunges to the bottom of the river, landing, manacled, on a flowerbed. two water sprites caress his fallen body and insert a black pearl into his mouth. the queen performs her mournful aria, preparing to join her lover in death. a thin stream of liquid emanates from her mouth, trickling onto her ruffle and throne, then falling into the pools below. on its descent, the stream divides into two droplets that strike the water simultaneously. two perfect circles resonate outward, filling the surface of the bath with their waves, suggesting, in turn, eternal renewal or the echoes of a system expiring.
the cremaster cycle defers any definitive conclusion.